Letting Attention Go Into Thought
Dejar que la atención se adentre en el pensamiento
A question about the nature of attention, whether we can control it, and what it means to let attention rest in thought rather than fighting against it.
Letting Attention Go Into Thought
A question about the nature of attention, whether we can control it, and what it means to let attention rest in thought rather than fighting against it.
I would like to ask you about this idea of attention. When I direct my attention to, say, a sensation in my feet, it feels as if there is a movement. It's invisible, but there is a feeling of attention going to the feet. When I want to withdraw my attention from the feet and go back to the original source of the attention, I'm not quite clear about how to do that, because I have no idea where the source of attention is. It's very easy for me to move my attention around to objects; that's a habit. But when I want to call back my attention from all objects to its original source, I don't even know what attention is. I'm a bit confused.
I can't speak specifically about moving attention to a source or bringing it back to a source. I don't think I've ever said that.
I think I picked it up somewhere else.
Right, so I can't speak to that. But I can speak about what you're talking about in general regarding attention.
We don't control attention
When you say, "I can bring my attention and I can move it here and there," there is an aspect to that which does make sense to express it that way. But really, we don't control attention. There is an identification with a movement of attention, and you could see that attention has its own movement.
If you observe attention itself, it's going to do whatever it does. For example, I can say, "Bring your attention to your feet," and then your attention might go to your feet, or it might not, but most likely it will. In language it makes sense: I'm telling you to move your attention to your feet, you experience the attention going to your feet, and so you say, "I've moved my attention to my feet." But it's not really you doing that.
Attention as a warping of experience
Attention can be seen as how the experience of phenomena, sensation, perception, sound, sight, thought, and imagination warps. What comes into foreground, what goes into background: it's a warping of experience, and it's done by the mind. It can be trained, and there is usefulness in training attention. In a sense, you can consider it like a muscle that can be strengthened. With a more trained attention, there could be more focusing on different aspects of experience, which could lead to deeper insight.
But there is something I prioritize, which has to do with noticing that there is something prior to attention. You can describe attention moving, so you are not attention.
No.
You can also notice that attention does what it does. There can be a bit of identification with it, a sense of "I'm doing it." But if you sit and observe your attention, it's just going to do what it does.
What is prior to attention
It is more important to notice that there is something prior to the attention. In a sense, that might be what the "bringing attention to its source" that you heard somewhere else is pointing to. This is hard to put into language, because what is prior to attention is actually nothing. It's emptiness. You won't find anything that is prior to attention. But you can notice that the movement of attention is known. The sense of "I" moving it is known.
Yes.
Following the process of neti neti, which is self-inquiry: "What am I? I'm not this, I'm not that. Not this, not this, not this. Nothing of what is known is what I am." You are not the attention, and you are not the sense of you directing the attention. That is also known.
Yes. I can feel what you say. There is knowing of attention.
And there's also the knowing of the experience of "I move the attention." At times the experience will be "I cannot control the attention; it's doing what it's doing and I can't control it." And sometimes it's "I'm controlling the attention."
When you say in the meditation, "If you go into your thought, let it be, just let it go into it," I presume "you" doesn't mean attention? Sometimes I get it mixed up. I thought it was attention that keeps going into thought. But now you're saying that attention is not me. So when I go into thought, it's not the attention that goes into the thought? I thought that parts of me become an attention that goes into thought.
Attention going into thought
It's both. What can happen is attention goes into thought, and then thought becomes foreground. It becomes the experience that's more in focus. And often what happens is that there is a fighting with thought, a wanting to push thought away, a struggling with the activity of thought.
What happens is focus goes into thought, and it's a habit. This is why the training of attention matters. It's like a muscle. You could train the attention so that it habitually moves into sensation instead of thought. That's a valuable practice: to train attention to notice when it's focusing on thought and instead move into sensation.
In the meditation, I did something a little different. The point you're describing is: if you notice attention, awareness, the focus going into thought, let it happen. Don't train it out of thought. Just see what happens. Fully accept it and taste it. Because if you do that, in a sense that's one way of working with attention. It will deactivate the struggle with thought.
There is a sort of experience of just allowing the focus to stay with thought and experiencing the content of thought. But when the content of thought is so ridiculous, it just causes trouble. The mind keeps interpreting reality through a distorted picture.
The mind is going to do that no matter what. If you say it's ridiculous and the interpretation is the problem, you're starting to fight with thought.
That's right. That's when it happens, when I allow the attention to stay in the thoughts.
Letting thought happen while staying aware
But there's more there, because attention can go into thought, and if you let it do that, it means you're aware of that. There's a really important distinction here, because there is a disidentification. If you are aware that attention is going into thought and you let it happen, there is a disidentification with the content of thought. You only really get what we would call "lost in thought" when you are identifying with objects of thought, with some part of the content of the narrative. That's where you get into this push-pull.
Because you're trying not to identify, you could bring the attention onto the breath, for example, and that's a valid practice. But there's another option: to not try to stop the focus on thought. Let it happen, but notice it's happening. The moment you do that, you're noticing you're in thought.
Yes.
That implies that you are, to some degree, disidentifying. When we're lost in thought, we don't know we're lost in thought. It's reality. And then there's a moment of "Oh, I'm thinking a lot," and then there's this fighting with it.
Also, the content, when you say it's problematic and causing problems, is only causing problems because you're believing some of it.
Exactly. I understand the point. I must be holding it as true; otherwise I wouldn't be fighting against it. Some resistance must be held to fight against. But that is what I haven't discovered.
And that's why it's harder to discover by bringing attention out of thought. It's easier to discover by letting the attention go into thought, but observing it. Recognize it's a movie happening. It's not reality. It's thought. Then look at the movie. As you look, you can start to understand. For example, "This kind of dark thought creates this fear or anxiety; there's a hook for me there." Unless we see the deeper aspects of thought and how the mind works, we won't be able to see through it.
The anchor of practice
The practice of bringing attention to the breath and out of thought is necessary, because the moment thought gets intense, we're pulled in. To be able to get anchored in what is not thought gives us the ability to go into thought without being completely identified, immersed, and collapsed.
Yes. And when staying with thought that is so negative, I get to experience the negativity. And that's okay?
Yes, exactly. And more importantly, look at the temptation to believe that some of it is real or true.
Sometimes thoughts are so negative that it is clear it's not true. And when I stay with it, I get to experience the negativity.
Seeing through negativity
When you fully see through it, you could find it funny. The negativity will only remain fully negative when something is still believed, when there's some reality to it. When you fully see through it, it could be like a dark comedy.
So can I say it's like experiencing this negativity to a point that it doesn't feel real? Is that how it works?
If the negativity affects you in some form, if some of it becomes real, if there is a certain reality to the negativity, then there is more to be seen.
I don't know if I'll be taken by belief, falling into the negative, and I become so negative.
Just keep looking at it and find the absurdity and the comedy in it, because that's going to break the spell. There are emotional qualities that become addictive to the mind. There is a certain aspect of the negativity that becomes addictive. But if you're no longer believing it, if it becomes funny, it will deactivate the power of the negativity that there is an addiction to.
This requires time, because it is actually changing biochemistry, changing hormones, changing the body-mind. It takes some time to go through the withdrawal and stabilize. But first you need to see more deeply the hook of the negativity.
When you don't know you're in thought
So when I'm in these thoughts without realizing I'm in a thought, at that point there's nothing I can do. It's only when I realize, "Oh, I was in a thought." And at that point, I stay with the thought. But I also find that at that point, the thought just dissolves. I can't even hold it there and stay in it, because it's already going.
You've seen that thought, and so it dissolves. Yes, that's what happens. For the time before you notice you're lost in thought, as you said, you can't do anything there. But that's where the practice of what you could call mindfulness, attention, breath, sensation, having a regular practice, is going to make it more recurrent that you snap out of the belief in the thought.